digital asset management

digital asset management

09-20-2006, 04:39 AM

I am struggling with the organization, storing and managing of my digital assets. David's filing systems work very well for physical files. I am now getting more and more paperless and have found both some breakthroughs and some constraints. I feel very vulnerable to the loss of my stuff.

The two big breakthroughs were getting a second monitor and a good fast scanner. Most of my stuff comes to me in digital form now. That which doesn't is fairly easily digitized. The advent of the second screen has made it much easier and more intuitive to work on digital documents without feeling compelled to print them out.

With my digital music and image files, I have been able to come up with a catalog system that allows me to just keep adding the files to sequential stacks that are easily backed up incrementally. The catalog software then allows me to organize and view content however I want to using metadata.

I have not been able to figure this out with all of my documents and correspondence. I file this stuff in a content-based system on my hard drive. The problem is that each time I back it up, I have to back the whole thing up. And, the archive is getting huge. I can't figure out how to just do the increment. And, my Outlook email is separate unless I make and file a pdf.

I going to presume that you're using a Wintel based PC. A number of forum members have pointed out Google desktop as a search feature plus paper tiger for document management. I guest that paper tiger comes with a strong search feature which may make google desktop redundant.

Also the next release of MS OS (Vista) is supposed to have built in search capability (similar to Apple's Spotlight). For word documents you may also wish to use the "properties" dialogue function as it provides expanded capabilities for metadata etc.

On the issue of incidental back ups you should look to the instructions or support page of the software that you are using. Most back up software has setting that allow either full or incremental back up. If not find a software package that does.